TSR The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR

Because the Saga of TSR3 has been ongoing for a while, with many landmarks, I thought I'd do a quick timeline for those who haven't had the time (or, frankly, inclination) to keep up with the whole palaver.

As multiple entities refer to themselves as TSR, I will use the nomenclature (1), (2) etc. to distinguish them. However, all the companies below simply use the term "TSR".

The principle people involved with this story are Ernie Gygax (one of Gary Gygax's children), Justin LaNasa (a tattooist, weapon designer, and briefly a politician who refers to himself as Sir Justin LaNasa*), Stephen Dinehart (co-creator of Giantlands with James Ward), and -- later -- Michael K. Hovermale, TSR3's PR officer.

Also linked to TSR3 is the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Much of TSR3’s commercial business appears to be conducted via the museum.

• 1974. TSR1 creates D&D.
• 1997. TSR1 is bought by WotC (WotC is bought by Hasbro in 1999).
• November 2012. Jayson Elliot registers the TSR2 name as a trademark to launch Gygax Magazine. Luke and Ernie Gygax are involved.
• November 2015. Gail Gygax sues TSR2. Luke and Ernie Gygax are forced to leave. Gygax magazine is forced to close by Gail Gygax. The company continues to sell the Top Secret RPG under the name TSR2.
• October 2020. The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum claims ownership of various TSR logos and tries to license them to OSR publishers.
• June 19th 2021. TSR3 announces itself with a press release. It claims to be the original TSR1 back again, under the leadership of Ernie Gygax, Gary's son, announcing that "the band is back together". Also involved are Justin LaNasa and Stephen Dinehart. Their flagship product is "GIANTLANDS" by James Ward and Stephen Dinehart.
• June 22nd 2021. TSR3 announces it is rebooting Star Frontiers, a game which WotC owns and is currently selling online. They registered the trademark back in April 2021.
• June 24th 2021. Ernie Gygax does a YouTube interview, and I transcribe it. The interview begins a controversy which rages online and includes digs at newer gamers, WotC, and trans people.
• June 25th 2021. It transpires that TSR2's Jayson Elliot forgot to renew the trademark registration, at which point his former partner Ernie Gygax, along with Justin LaNasa & Stephen Dinehart, swept in and grabbed it before notifying him. They offer to let him use it for a nominal fee.

• Late June 2021. TSR3 embarks on an astonishing social media campaign where they tell people who don't like Gary Gygax not to play D&D, call a trans person on Twitter 'disgusting', thank the 'woke' because sales are up, insult Luke Gygax, and more. They also block or insult those who question them on Twitter.
• Late June 2021. Various companies distance themselves from TSR3, including Gen Con, TSR2 (who rebrand themselves Solarian Games), GAMA, and various individuals such as Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, Jeff Dee, and more. TSR3 responds to being banned from Gen Con by claiming that they created the convention.

• June 30th 2021. TSR3 blames the widespread pushback it is getting on WotC, accusing it of mounting a coordinated assault on them. In the same tweets they claim that they created the TTRPG business. Ernie Gygax and Stephen Dinehart then deactivate their Twitter accounts. Months later it transpires that this is the date they received a C&D from WotC regarding their use of their IP.

• July 2nd 2021. TSR3's Twitter account claims now to be run by a new Public Relations Officer called Michael.
• July 6th 2021. TSR3's Michael has not been heard of since he announced himself prompting a widespread online search for him.
• July 7th 2021. TSR3 rebrands its website 'Wonderfiled'(sic) as Stephen Dinehart publicly blocks WotC and Hasbro on Twitter and announces he is "breaking up with them" because of politics.

• July 9th 2021. Yet another TSR website appears! This one we call TSR 3.5. TSR3 has split into two -- Wonderfiled (later Wonderfilled), and TSR Hobbies. Stephen Dinehart runs the former, which features the GIANTLANDS project, while Ernie Gygax and Justin LaNasa run the latter.
• July 9th 2021. With the new TSR3.5, the company claims that an unnamed individual was running the Twitter accounts of the company, it's affiliate companies, and the individuals involved with the company, and that all posts on any of those social media accounts should now be considered "invalid".
• July 26th 2021. TSR3.5 announces TSR CON to be held on the July 4th weekend in the Horticultural Hall at Lake Geneva, WI, the name location as Gen Con launched in 1968. TSR announces that "TSR CON will always be here" (it never takes places there).

• September 27th 2021. TSR3's Michael K. Hovermale shows up here on EN World.
• October 14th 2021. Michael Hovermale announces that their Star Frontiers game became available and then sold out before they could announce it. Nobody can find anybody who bought this product.
• October 15th 2021. LaNasa calls EN World a 'very big company' and publicly accuses me of making all this up. I publicly ask TSR's representative, Michael K. Hovermale, three times what I've allegedly made up, but get no reply.
• October 20th 2021. TSR Con is moved from the July 4th weekend to March 24-27, the exact same dates as Gary Con. The venue is moved from the Horticultural Hall to the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. A graphic on its website promises that they will not be checking vaccinations or asking people to wear face masks.

• December 6th 2021. A record is found showing that WotC is taking action against TSR3.5 - an administrative procedure to cancel its registration of the trademarks it is using, citing - among other things - fraud.
• December 7th 2021. After a long quiet period, TSR3.5 launches an IndieGogo campaign to "stop Wizards of the Coast". It files for a court declaration of its ownership of the TSR trademarks. The crowdfunding campaign will go to fight the legal battle, with any left over being donated to the Gygax Memorial Fund.
• December 9th 2021. TSR3.5 voluntarily dismisses the suit it filed two days before. The IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign is still running.

• December 11th 2021. The president of the Gygax Memorial fund publicly declares that they were never consulted, and would refuse any donation from TSR3's crowdfunding campaign. TSR3 quietly removes the references to the GMF from the IndieGoGo page.
• December 29th 2021. TSR3.5 refiles its lawsuit, this time in the correct jurisdiction. LaNasa and TSR ask for a trial by Jury.

• January 8th 2020. Wonderfiled[sic]'s Stephen Dinehart threatens to sue Twitter user David Flor for his negative review of Giantlands on the platform.
• January 10th 2022. TSR3's Justin LaNasa sends TSR alumn Tim Kask a profane message, telling him to "Go suck Lukes/wotc/balls you f*****g coward" and accusing him of having been fired from TSR for stealing.
• January 11th 2022. Michael K Hovermale claims that the first edition of TSR3's Star Frontiers: New Genesis game was released and has sold out. He says “It was a very small limited run released and sold on the DHSM [Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum] website. It is no longer available, and probably won’t be reprinted.” As yet, nobody has publicly revealed that they bought a copy.
• January 14th 2022. Michael K. Hovermale resigns as TSR3's Chief Creative Officer and Public Relations Officer after 6 months in the position.
• March 4th 2022. WotC strikes back with a lawsuit naming TSR, Justin LaNasa personally, and the Dungeon Hobby Shop museum. WotC seeks a judgement that TSR hand over all domains, take down all websites, pay treble damages and costs, hand over all stock and proceeds related to the trademarks, and more. TSR has 21 days to respond.

• March 22nd 2022. TSR gets an extension on that WoTC suit. Two waivers of service of summons granted to both Justin LaNasa and the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum. He now has 60 days from March 4th to serve an answer or motion, or suffer default judgment.
• March 26th 2022. TSR CON takes place at the same time as Gary Con. TSR claims " lol, actually we asked just about every one of the 800 people stopping by, TSR CON, and about 60% had no idea Gary con was going on, and we tried pushing them to go over and attend."
• March 28th 2022. TSR3 posts images of 'rebound' copies of AD&D 1E books it is selling for $650 each.
• May 17th 2022. Evidence emerges of Nazi connections via TSR3's Dave Johnson. Public Twitter posts include concentrated hateful imagery and messages over a long period of time.
• May 17th 2022. DriveThruRPG removes all Dave Johnson Games titles from the platform.
• May 17th 2022. A jury trial date is set for the TSR/WotC lawsuit for October 2023 (few suits like this actually make it to trial in the end).

• July 19th 2022. A leaked version of a beta version of TSR's 'Star Frontiers: New Genesis' game emerges on the internet. The content includes racist and white-supremacist propaganda, including character races with ability caps based on ethnicity, and various homophobic and transphobic references. Justin LaNasa immediately threatened to sue blogger Eric Tenkar, who shared the information publicly ('Mario Real' is one of LaNasa's online pseudonyms). Various evidence points towards the document's genuine nature, including an accidentally revealed Google drive belonging to NuTSR.
• July 22nd 2022. A video shows a Google Drive that appears to be owned by nuTSR, which contains a list of enemies of the company, usually with the word "WOKE" in caps being used as a pejorative.

(screenshot courtesy of the @nohateingaming Twitter account)​

• August 30th 2022. Wizard Tower Games announces that they have received a subpeona from WotC regarding TSR and Justin LaNasa. Former NuTSR employee Michaal K Hovermale confirms that he has also received a subpeona.
• September 5th 2022. Justin LaNasa sends out customer data, including addresses and credit card numbers. LaNasa responds by publicly claiming the evidence is photoshopped and slandering those who revealed it as liars.
• September 8th 2022. WoTC files an injunction to prevent LaNasa or his companies from “publishing, distributing, or otherwise making available Star Frontiers New Genesis or any iteration of the game using the Marks”.
• June 8th 2023. NuTSR files for bankruptcy. The case between WotC and NuTSR is postponed until March 2024.

Have I missed anything important? I'll continue updating this as I remember things, or as people remind me of things!

To the best of my knowledge, TSR3 is not actually selling any type of gaming product.

*if anybody has any link to LaNasa's knighthood, please let me know!

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Websites
Various websites have come and gone. I'll try to make some sense of it here so you know what site you're actually visiting!

• TSR.com is the original TSR website. For a long time it redirected to WotC. The URL is no longer in use. (WotC)
• TSRgames.com was TSR2 until summer 2021. The site is still running, although TSR2 is now called Solarian Games. (Jayson Elliot)
• TSR.games was TSR3 until summer 2021. It now goes to Wonderfiled(sic)'s website. (Stephen Dinehart)
• TSR-hobbies.com is TSR 3.5, launched summer 2021 by Justin LaNasa and Ernie Gygax. (Justin LaNasa)

 

[Ancalagon]

It’s not just that Ernie did not separate himself from Lanasa or that he buries his head in the sand… All this started with HIS bigoted remarks and lack of apology. He is not just bad by association….

What I find sad is that ... what he said was pretty crappy, but I think (maybe I'm wrong) that it wasn't an unforgivable remark. A real apology, an examination of what was said etc, could have set things right (ish).

Instead, here we are

 

[pantsorama]

All things considered, Justin doesn't know what he's doing. He's never personally published a large product and is in way over his head. But he's likely way past the point of no return, the point where he can't simply drop the project and walk away. He's vested, and there's no way to stop WotC from coming after him. So he'll likely keep stringing us along for the next year, at some point having not much choice than to declare bankruptcy or something, and will likely do something terrible like sell the DHSM land and turn the lot into a gas station.

Maybe we will get lucky and WotC will own the place. That is where we are now. Hoping that some corporate entity will get the place because it will be a better steward than the originator's son.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It’s not just that Ernie did not separate himself from Lanasa or that he buries his head in the sand… All this started with HIS bigoted remarks and lack of apology. He is not just bad by association….

Yep. And for full disclosure @Graph Paper Architect , it's why I asked you the question to clarify where you stood, because you had defended LaNasa publicly as their CCO after he had sent that nasty letter to Tim Kask, so at some point you knew what kind of person he was. You then announced your departure (thanking Justin for all he did) 3 days after Darlene released her statement.

So I hope you can understand why I asked the question. I suppose I have a follow-up. Were those two things contributors to your leaving? The timeline seems to suggest that, but I don't want to assume.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Maybe we will get lucky and WotC will own the place. That is where we are now. Hoping that some corporate entity will get the place because it will be a better steward than the originator's son.

As a fan, the whole thing is just....really sad. I mean, I'd love to have a D&D museum, and that house would be a great place for it. But I have no idea what they are doing. I'm no expert, but if I were doing a museum, I'd:

• actually have important items there from the history. There is a treasure trove of rare items (Frank and Jim Ward have been ebaying them) that no one else has. Those things should be in the museum. For someone flashing wads of cash, Justin should have been buying up those things and make the museum stand out, rather than displaying items a lot of other gamers already own and his own Frankenstein creations (like the black covered AD&D books). I would want to go to a museum to see original draft notes from the company, not to see a copy of 1e mass produced books. I mean, knowing that Frank and Jim have a ton of original unique stuff and are selling it, the first thing I'd do is approach them to see what they would be willing to sell
• run it like an actual business, on the up and up, and not shady backroom deals with "volunteers"
• If it's a D&D museum, then it has things from every edition of D&D and pop culture, not just pre-1985 stuff. Is it a D&D museum, or personal shrine to Gary?
• for all that is holy, treat people politely and have a professional public attitude.
• stay away from white nationalists, neo-nazis, and other hate groups. Seriously, how hard is that?

But alas, I'm not in charge lol.

 

[Jer]

if I were doing a museum...

I mean, that's a good list. That's like the floor for running an actual museum rather than a novelty roadside attraction.

But I get the feeling that what the Hobby Shop Museum actually is is more like a roadside novelty attraction. Like a "come see the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" sort of thing. There's no archival work going on or any real preservation work going on, they just happen to own a building where the hobby started and they figured they could make some money off of it. it's a carnival side show operation, not an actual museum.

 

[Bolares]

What I find sad is that ... what he said was pretty crappy, but I think (maybe I'm wrong) that it wasn't an unforgivable remark. A real apology, an examination of what was said etc, could have set things right (ish).

Instead, here we are

Yep, he could have made it right, but he chose to hide behind a grifter and a nazi, and pretend nothing is happening/putting all the blame in Lanasa. To me, right now, he is just as bad as them.

 

[adamantyr]

Yep, he could have made it right, but he chose to hide behind a grifter and a nazi, and pretend nothing is happening/putting all the blame in Lanasa. To me, right now, he is just as bad as them.

Ernie had opportunities to walk back his comments in the interview. He didn't.

In his FB "apology" he deliberately excluded the groups he offended. AND tried to claim it was how he was raised, etc. I.E. throwing blame on his mom. AND brought up all sorts of inappropriate garbage that showed racist attitudes towards indigenous Americans.

The only thing protecting him from legal wrath from WotC is his last name. That and it's still not really clear what ownership he has in the DHSM.

 

[darjr]

Two things.
Why hasn’t WitC asked the judge for an injunction to stop NuTSR from working on SF? Can they?

Also I have a relative who ascribes to a racist UFO cult ck conspiracy theory that now rings a bell with some of the things in NG from Dave Johnson.
Someone on rpg.net suggested it might be a copy paste from a UGO setting.
Maybe Dave Johnson based his racist game on that racist UFO conspiracy theory?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One of the trends I've seen of late is that people get into trouble when they start acting like their fame and celebrity is a currency in and of itself. LaNasa doesn't even have the benefit of having any celebrity to cash in on. As you said, without the TSR grift and without real product, he's got nothing.

I think what you're describing are situations where people get away with bad behavior because their fame, money, or history gives them privilege that they take advantage of. Justin LaNasa has no history, no product, and consequently none of the privilege. If he didn't have the illegally obtained TSR trademark behind him, he would be a nobody in the OSR. So banning him is pretty easy.

Ernie Gygax, and to a lesser extent Jeff Leason, do have the history and fame, so they continue to get away with it. If Ernie had any last name other than Gygax, his behavior over the past year could probably get him barred from a couple cons. Remember, his name is on the N&N version of SFNG as well.

Most of the other Gygaxes have made their stance on Not-TSR and their abhorrent beliefs pretty clear. To expect them to disown a family member, that's a whole different level. And I think most people understand that. What Poire doesn't get is that for all his "brother from my other mother" (which, by the way, isn't the way I've heard that expression go) talk, that doesn't make him family. Poire doesn't get to use that excuse as a shield.

Ernie deserves no sympathy. By not choosing to refute and condemn LaNasa and other people, he's chosen a side.

I'm also, though, not going to get on Luke, Heidi, or any of the other children of Gary Gygax for not actively condemning him in public. It's always a hard thing when you have family that you are ashamed of. If they want to remain silent and let him dig his own grave I am not going to judge them for it. I've had plenty of that personally to know it's not so simple to do.

 

[adamantyr]

Two things.
Why hasn’t WitC asked the judge for an injunction to stop NuTSR from working on SF? Can they?

I think an injunction would require the product to actually be sold. However, as they claim the "1st edition" comb-bound sold out months ago, that may be enough basis for one, even though it was an outright lie.

Before the content of the beta was known, I think WotC was content to let them draw out their own rope to hang themselves with, since it was going to court anyway. Now they may take harsher action...